


one + one + one (= three)

by nyckolodeo_n



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 03:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4945513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyckolodeo_n/pseuds/nyckolodeo_n
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He pushes the door that leads from the kitchen to the counter and pauses in his tracks. He knows who Niall and Zayn are, of course, has rubbed one off plenty of times to the idea of being in between the two of them, intimately and not so intimately. Sometimes he wonders if they’re together because they’re soulmates, because they love each other truly as not-soulmates, or because of both. There are a lot of pairing that end up hating each other and make it as obvious as they can in private and in public. Harry’s never seen these two be anything but loving towards each other. They’re always touching in some way, too, or at least they are when they’re in the shop. Harry avoids checking them out as much as possible so that he can avoid making a fool of himself; not that he’s always successful of course.</p>
<p>or; the soulmates au that no one actually asked for</p>
            </blockquote>





	one + one + one (= three)

**Author's Note:**

> i have been working on this.... for a really long time and i'm glad i was finally able to wrap it up and call it quits. This is for all my zarriall people out there x
> 
> i would like to dedicate this to my bestest [Sam](http://niallandharryy.tumblr.com) since she was kind enough to read multiple versions of this and encourage me to keep writing when i wanted to give up .xo

**_According to Greek Mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate beings condemning them to spend the rest of their lives in sear for their other halves. – Plato’s The Symposium_ **

****

What they forget to mention, is that every once in a while there was a soul that was made up of _more_. A soul with six arms, six legs, and three faces. What they forgot to mention was that sometimes, a soul was made up of three.

-x-

Harry learns he's different at the age of four, when he’s finally learning to put proper sentences together and is beginning to be taught about how soulmates and your Mark work. He forgets it quickly, his mind not fully capable of holding on to that much information just yet, but he knows a Bond is supposed to be you and one other person.A Bond means you and one other person in the world are destined, almost required, to be together. You have one person’s writing on your skin and they have yours. A Bond is socially accepted between a boy and girl, but not two boys and not two girls. A Bond should never be between more than two people.

His mum tries to hide it from him and his father for as long as she can. His dad was brought up in a very traditional family, very anti a lot of things Harry doesn’t understand. He grew up with the teachings and understanding that anyone that went against the general and accepted standard of Soulmates was a freak, should under no circumstances be tolerated in society. Harry is a part of a Soul Bond that is made up of three, and when his father finds out there’s yelling and slammed doors and Gemma hiding them in her room until it all ends. They fall asleep in there, curled around each other protectively, as if they can keep anything bad from happening to the other one.

When they wake up and go downstairs for breakfast the next morning, their Dad is gone, and they might just be better off for it.

-x-

Harry has one Mark on his hip and the other on the inside of his bicep.

He’s twelve and they’re moving to a new part of England, his mother having gotten a job promotion that required them to move to a bigger place they wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. He scratches absentmindedly at his hip as his mum drives them to a part of town just outside of Central London, wondering when his Words will actually decide to settle. The thing with Soulmates is, it’s not an exact science, there’s no way to know how any of it works or if your words actually will settle. Some people carry the same phrase or word throughout the entirety of their lives, their mark being a manifestation of the first thing their Intended is going to say to them; they are considered Type A. There are those who have names, dates or times, or a combination of the three, still written in their other half’s hand, signifying the exact time of day you’ll meet your Intended; they are considered Type B. Harry isn’t sure if he envies or pities those people more.

And then there are people like him; Type C. While their marks are based on hand writing like everyone else’s – that’s the one thing any of the Types have in common and wouldn’t Harry just love to know _why –_ there’s no certainty in it. His words are a manifestation of what their other half is thinking at the time, and the only way they will ever settle is when the two – _three_ – finally meet. Each destined pair has the matching and corresponding Mark Type to the other half – third, quarter, fifth, _whatever_ – of their soul. The Mark Type does not change no matter how many parts your soul is waiting on, and you know exactly what Type you are by the age of five. Harry’s marks have always moved and changed, day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. Neither of his Words are ever the same thing at the same time. Harry’s hoping he doesn’t have to wait much longer, and that the compliments of his soul haven’t given up on him just yet.

-x-

He’s fifteen and feeling a little dejected when the other two parts of his Bond find each other. Being the missing piece of three means he gets the unfortunately painful reminder and alert that he needs to get a fucking move on. He knows it’s a bit unreasonable, given there are people out there who never meet their Soulmate due to unexpected illness or their other half lives on a completely different part of the world than them. It’s normal, people don’t necessarily move on, but they deal with it, dating and, in some cases, marrying other people because they don’t want to wait any longer. That happens more often to Type C people than anyone, but there a lot more of those kinds of people in the world than people think.

 He’s in the kitchen, cutting tomatoes for his mum’s salad when his arm starts tingling. He wipes at it once and ignores it for the time being. He goes about washing the lettuce and putting it in the strainer while he goes into the cabinet to grab the dry ingredients when there’s an overwhelmingly sharp pain in his hip that makes him drop the can of croutons and slam into the kitchen island. He tries to yell for help, but he can’t get air into his lungs so he stumbles toward the doorway of the kitchen, only to fall and just barely catch himself before he hits his face on the floor. He blacks out and when he comes to, his mum and Gem have moved him to the couch and he’s been stripped down to the least amount of clothing that can be considered decent.

Anne kisses him on the forehead and runs a cool clothe over his brow while Gem punches him once and tells not to scare her like that again. Harry smiles weakly and tells her that he’ll try his best.

None of them address the elephant in the room as they watch Manchester United lose to Derby County and eat their dinner.

-x-

At sixteen, both sets of his Words read identical to each other. He’s working at the bakery on a Saturday when he feels an unescapable itch run down his bicep and over his hip. He gives a tight smile to the blonde kid who’s probably completely over thinking his order, and asks Sophia to take over for him just for a few minutes. She smiles at him and waves him on. Being a Type C herself,she understands the irritability of random spikes of not too comfortable moments he sometimes suffers. He ducks into the bathroom and, after making sure no one else is in there, locks the door behind himself. He quickly shucks off his shirt, the material becoming too much to bear on his currently over sensitive skin, cursing that when the building was built they didn’t feel the need to a manual fan in the communal bathrooms. He breathes harshly, in through his nose and out through his mouth, and when he looks at himself in the mirror, he freezes. He blinks, blinks again, rubs at his eyes, splashes his face with cold water, and no matter what, the words on his bicep and hip are the same, read the same, even with the obviously different handwriting.

His breath catches in his throat and he can feel tears starting to form in the corners of his eyes. He’s probably overreacting just a bit, as he is wont to do, but this is a huge deal for him. He’s never thought of the possibility that something like this would happen to _him._ This is the kind of thing he reads about, that fiction writers create books out of and get millions of dollars’ worth of sales, because everyone is rooting for the underdog, everyone wants them to succeed. He takes a deep steadying breath, finally gaining the sense to take as many quick pictures as he can before his soulmates change their minds, and then centers himself. He still has a job to do, and he can’t afford to hide himself in the bathroom, no matter how much his boss will excuse him for it. He plasters on a smile, more real and relaxed than before, and saunters out of the bathroom, giving a slight nod to Sophia when she throws him a worried glance.

He doesn’t think about the words **_‘I can’t believe it’s him’_** for the rest of the day.

-x-

It doesn’t sink in until he’s home and half asleep that the matching words means that his soulmates have seen him; his soulmates know what he looks like and maybe even what his voice sounds like depending on when they walked in; but it means that they _know;_ they’re no longer this intangible thing that he only dreams about, the possibility of him meeting whoever they are that more realistic than it’s ever been. He has a chance to be happy. And then he thinks about the fact that the only way they know is because they _saw,_ whoever belongs to the scrawl on his arms _saw_ what they were thinking and they didn’t even _say_ anything to him. It confuses him for the slightest bit of a second; if they saw, why didn’t they speak up?

He falls asleep never having figured out a real answer.

-x-

Harry’s seventeen and the first thing he does is think _‘this is it; today is the day’_ just like he has every morning since he’s learned that his soulmates are close by. He really doesn’t have the greatest patience. The second thing he does is look at the Mark on his bicep; this one lately has been a constant stream of very impressive swear phrases and music related terms and symbols. Today, like every other day, still doesn’t give him any clue as to who his soulmates could possibly be. One time the words on his arm contained a capitol ‘Z’ as if a nickname to someone, but that didn’t really mean anything. There are a lot of people that have a name that start with Z in the world, and he’s not going to try and figure it out by asking everyone he walks past what their name is.

He stumbles out of bed and blindly stumbles to the bathroom to get ready for work, wishing more than anything that he hadn’t been too worn out the day before when Sophia tricked him into trading shifts with her. It’s been six months since that moment in the shop where both of his words matched – no _Liam,_ he wasn’t keeping track – and every day, the hope that his soulmates would finally reach out to him got smaller and smaller. Harry wasn’t the type of person to give up so easily, but it was getting harder and harder to determine whether or not they weren’t approaching him because they were nervous, or because they thought he wasn’t what they had been hoping for. Now, Harry isn’t a cynic by any means, it’s just a little disconcerting.

He takes a quick shower, throws on his uniform, blow dries and puts up his hair, and then he’s out the door, grabbing a banana and water bottle for an on-the-fly breakfast, and walking the short distance to work. The morning routine at the shop is pretty simple, he mixes and shapes all the cookies, pours the cupcake batter into the cups, adds the necessary fruit or “topping” to the muffins, and then pushes them all into their respective ovens. Everything else stays cold and is already made to be put on display and be heated to order, so Harry refills the case, turns the chairs right-side-up, and wipes off every flat surface to make sure nothing was missed when closing the night before. He’s pulling the bakes goods out at 7:30, half an hour before Brianna and Sophia come in and the bakery actually opens, when there’s a knock on the door. Harry, from his perch on the kitchen counter, frowns slightly as he double and triple checks the time on his phone, watch, and the clock on the wall. The knocking continues, and Harry sighs as he slides off the counter and walks to the front of the shop. It’s not the first time that someone’s tried to talk him into opening just the few minutes early, but sometimes Harry wishes people would just get the hint.

He pushes the door that leads from the kitchen to the counter and pauses in his tracks. He knows who Niall and Zayn are, of course, has rubbed one off plenty of times to the idea of being in between the two of them, intimately and not so intimately. Sometimes he wonders if they’re together because they’re soulmates, because they love each other truly as not-soulmates, or because of both. There are a lot of pairing that end up hating each other and make it as obvious as they can in private and in public. Harry’s never seen these two be anything but loving towards each other. They’re always touching in some way, too, or at least they are when they’re in the shop. Harry avoids checking them out as much as possible so that he can avoid making a fool of himself; not that he’s always successful of course.

He makes his way to the front of the shop and cracks open the door. “We’re not open yet.” He says, tone short and final, “Is there something you needed?” They’re both just standing there, looking at a loss for words, and Harry doesn’t understand why. He looks between Zayn and Niall, and notices that the blonde is staring pretty intensely at his left bicep. Harry looks down at it himself, and furrows his eyebrows when it reads, _‘he actually opened the door.’_ Harry doesn’t get it, but when he looks back at Niall and Zayn, the latter gripping tightly to the formers jumper, something in the curly haired boy’s brain clicks. He pulls them into the shop, relocks the door, and stops.

 “We’ve been waiting for you.” The black-haired boy says, voice confident, but still soft, as if he’s trying to keep from scaring Harry away, which is actually really reasonable considering he doesn’t actually know what to do from here. He can feel the words on his hips freeze in place at those words, the tell-tale sign of them tingling as the settle something he’s unable to ignore. There’s no way that they aren’t are all each other’s soulmates, he can feel it, and his voice is stuck in his throat. He turns to look at the two boys that he’s seen almost every day for almost six months; the beautiful blonde with the Irish lilt that entrances Harry on a very regular basis, with freckles that are splattered around his face in such a random pattern that it looks almost intentional. He looks at Zayn, at the tanned skin that so contrasts so much to Niall’s that it goes well together, as his very brown eyes that would be difficult not to get lost in, and the pink of his lips that Harry would like to spend hours experiencing and kissing. He tries to picture himself as a third part of this pair’s whole, and it just doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t fit in anywhere, and there’s no way they’re going to want to keep him–

“That’s enough of that Harry.” Zayn says, startling him out of his daze. Harry looks at Zayn and where he’s standing behind Niall, where he’s been standing since the two of them first knocked on the door. Harry furrows his eyebrows in confusion, but before he can even ask what Zayn is talking about, the dark skinned boy taps the back of Niall’s neck, points at Harry, then to his own brain. And Harry gets it, understands now, why every time Harry’s seen them together, it’s been Niall on Zayn’s lap, Niall leading the two of them through a crowd, or Zayn burying his face in the blonde’s neck if they’re in a situation that calls for them to be in that front-to-back position.

Harry chances a glance at Niall again. The blonde haired boy hasn’t spoken a word since they walked in the door, and the curly haired boy raises an eyebrow in question. Niall’s eyes flick down to Harry’s bicep again, and the latter gets it. He rolls up his shirt sleeve more, very aware of how Niall’s eyes follow his every movement, of how important this moment seems to be for the blonde lad in front of him. When the sleeve is all the way to his shoulder, Harry returns his gaze to Niall, watches as the blonde boy slowly stalks forward to get a “better look” at the words scribbled in Niall’s messy handwriting across Harry’s arm. He lightly traces the words ‘ _he’s so beautiful’_ where they are scrawled in the bold, lopsided writing, and in front of his eyes, they change to _‘it’s really him’_ while Niall actually says out loud, “It’s really you.”

His voice is breathless, and barely a whisper. Harry knows that his words are going to stay like that forever now, aren’t going to be able to shift or change in any way, now that Niall has said them out loud, now that they’ve finally met each other. Harry takes a deep breath and slowly raises his hand to rest it on the back of Niall’s neck. He feels, rather than hears, the smaller boy’s sharp intake of breath as he strokes his fingers over where his words must be, as Harry leans down and presses his lips to the shell of the blonde boy’s ear. “It really is me.” He whispers, and now him and Niall match, their Words forever corresponding to each other’s. Niall laughs against his chest, and moves to wrap his arms around Harry’s middle instead of his arm. Harry readily reciprocates, arms coming up around the blonde’s shoulders and holding as tightly as he can without feeling like he’s going to crush the other lad.

Harry feels Zayn come up behind Niall, and he lifts his head from where it’s resting against the blonde’s so he can look the darker-skinned boy in the face. His eyes are earnest, full of fear that maybe Harry will accept Niall but not him, and it hurts Harry’s heart. He pulls up just a little bit from Niall and extends his arm out to Zayn, a small smile on his face as an encouragement to his other Intended to come join them. It’s a little silly; Zayn found Niall before Harry did, and there’s no way Niall would leave Zayn if Harry decided he didn’t want to be a part of three. What’s more silly is the idea that Harry wouldn’t want Zayn. He’s always liked Zayn’s uniqueness, has always been drawn to the quiet side of Zayn, though he knows that that isn’t how Zayn really is, has seen him when he hangs around Niall and Louis and that group of friends they have. If he’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t need their bond to want to be with these boys, doesn’t need society’s rules about love and couples to come to the decision that he could very easily fall in love with these two beautiful people standing in front of him.

So he smiles at Zayn, face bright and taken up by the ferocity of his grin. It must be somewhat comforting, because the other boy comes forward and interlocks his fingers with the ones on Harry’s outstretched hand while he latches onto Niall’s hip with his other hand. They must be a sight, Harry thinks to himself, the three of them intertwined like pieces of a puzzle. He squeezes Zayn’s hand and tightens his hold on Niall, not all too ready to let go, though he knows that he’s going to have to open up shop soon. He kisses the side of Niall’s head, causing the other boy to giggle, probably at how ridiculous the three of them look, and Zayn to smile himself. Harry moves the hand in Zayn’s up to rest on the latter’s neck, pulling Zayn more towards him so that he’s more plastered to the blonde’s back and Harry presses their foreheads together.

_“I’ve been waiting for you, too.”_

**Author's Note:**

> i don't own any of the characters named in the story x


End file.
